Institutional Review Board

The length of time for review and approval depends on the type of human research, the level of risk, and the complexity of ethical or technical questions that arise during review.

Exempt & Expedited Reviews will not be reviewed after April 1 (due 11:59pm March 31).  Therefore, please plan accordingly and submit early with a complete application packet. This will allow time for any needed revisions, if applicable.

• Note: If application is submitted on March 31 and fails initial administrative pre-review for completeness, it will not be reviewed until after summer.

Full Board Reviews that are submitted after February 1 will not be reviewed until August 15.

Amendments & Continuing Reviews will not be reviewed after April 15.

A great resource to help with this is our Student Research and Class Projects guidance document.

Federal regulations and university policies require IRB approval for research with human subjects. This applies whether research is conducted by faculty or students. However, many class projects are conducted for educational purposes and not as research, and thus, do not require IRB approval.

Class projects that involve systematic collection of data for which the design or objective is to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge (including publications and presentations [including the DSU Undergraduate Research Symposium]) are considered research.

IRBs may not approve research retroactively; therefore, if there is any doubt, please consult with the IRB or submit an application for review.

No. Per UT policy 607, student are not able to act as a Principal Investigator. You can certainly fill out the application, but you will need to sign as co-investigator and your faculty/mentor will need to submit the application packet to the IRB. We cannot accept application packets from students. Your faculty/mentor must submit the application packet to: IRB@utahtech.edu

Policy 607

We require completion of two courses with a minimum 80% for each module within: Responsible Conduct of Research [RCR] (in the field most applicable to you) and Information Privacy & Security (IPS). You will receive a completion certification at the end of the course which is good for 3 years.  Each PI, co-investigator, and key personnel needs to have evidence of current CITI certifications via PDFs attached to the application.

COURSE #1: All researchers and key personnel involved with a protocol being reviewed by the IRB will need to complete the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) course that is most appropriate for your field of study/research:

• Biomedical Responsible Conduct of Research
• Social and Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research
• Physical Science Responsible Conduct of Research
• Humanities Responsible Conduct of Research
• Responsible Conduct of Research for Engineers
• Responsible Conduct of Research for Administrators

*NOTE: The Human Subjects Research (HSR) course does not satisfy UT IRB requirements for CITI training.

COURSE #2: All researchers and key personnel involved with a protocol being reviewed by the IRB will also need to complete the Information Privacy and Security (IPS) course.

• IPS covers the principles of data protection, focusing on the healthcare-related privacy and information security requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the educational records and data-related requirements of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This course helps to ensure that all data collected is secured appropriately.
• NOTE: HIPAA is not simply health/medical-related information. There is often confusion about this. HIPAA includes 18 protected health information identifiers (vehicle identifiers, email addresses, computer IP addresses, etc.). Regardless of if you are researching any medical/health-related topics, you must adhere to HIPAA policy with information protection. The IPS course will provide the training you need to learn about these identifiers. See “HIPAA Identifiers Guidance Document” for further clarification.

CITI Training

Your application will be rejected. You will be notified of any missing documents or incomplete applications so that you can resubmit. Once your application packet has been submitted as complete, you will then be placed in queue on that subsequent date.

Submitting an incomplete application delays approval, as your submission is not placed in queue for review until it is 100% complete.

The IRB’s role is to review research approvals for ethical protection of human subjects. It is the PI’s responsibility to learn about the 3 levels of review and decide which they need. However, the PI does not need to decide which level of review for the application itself. Further, for exempt applications submitted, the UT IRB is responsible for making the determination and certification of exemption. IRB will notify you of certifying exemption status. The IRB will advise you if your proposal falls under the Full Committee Review, as this process will take much longer and will likely require the PI to meet with the committee in a formal convened meeting for review.

Of note, the UT IRB has one application for all 3 levels of review.

No – this is absolutely not the role of the IRB. However, the UT Research Office may be a great starting point for you. Additionally, reach out to other colleagues for collaboration, if needed. In addition, it is not the role of the IRB to help find a genre of interest or a topic that will “avoid IRB review” or “be exempt”.  A good place for the PI to start is the Guidance page as there are documents with detailed information about the categories of exempt, expedited, and full review.

You will need to email all of your documents in one email to the IRB: IRB@utahtech.edu. Please do not send documents in multiple emails as your application will be deemed incomplete and rejected, and this severely slows down efficiency of the review process for the IRB. Be sure all documents have correct file name (see File Naming for Application and Appendices) and are in PDF format.

Once the IRB has received a complete application packet with all required documents, you will receive a letter of receipt from the IRB with your protocol number listed within. Once you have that protocol #, you will need to refer to that # in all subsequent communication with the IRB. See Application Materials Required.

Depending on the level of review, notification of approval/approval with contingencies/disapproval will typically occur in 2-3 weeks (longer for Full Committee Reviews).

See Communication of Results of IRB Review and/or Understanding the IRB Review Process for further guidance.

Yes, we welcome you! If you are a UT faculty member or student who is partnering with another university who has already issued IRB approval for the project, you will need to have an Institutional Authorization Agreement (IAA) signed by the UT IRB and the partner university’s IRB. This allows the UT IRB to accept the partner university’s IRB review as our own and eliminate your need for a UT application.

If you are not a UT faculty member or student, you will most likely need to obtain a site permission letter from UT IRB. Your IRB-approval institution can help you to write this (they may have their own template). You will then send your IRB approval and all other supporting documents to UT IRB and we will review and decide whether to grant permission to do your survey at our institution. Depending on the department/college for which you wish to proceed, you may need permission from the Dept. Chair or College Dean to proceed.

See the “IRB Applications & Forms” page for this IAA document. Please send this form with a short paragraph about your research, your official IRB approval, and any other supporting documents to the UT IRB for our signature. You will then take that UT-signed form to your IRB-approval university for their signature and return the signed form to us for our files.

IAA Guidance Document